Brockton murder toll reaches 9 with downtown shooting

BROCKTON – Marc and Michele Smith were asleep in their Linwood Street home early Saturday morning when they awoke to the sound of six gunshots and glass breaking.

They ran downstairs to find a bullet hole through their living room window. The rocking chair where Michele sits with their 4-month-old daughter was covered in glass.

The shooting was one of four Brockton police responded to early Saturday morning, including one where a man was fatally shot in a parking lot behind Joe Angelo’s Cafe on Crescent Street.

Quentin Phillips, 28, of Mattapan, was shot in the chest and was later pronounced dead after being taken to a local hospital.

Outside the Smith household, a woman was shot in the leg as a nearby house party was being broken up around 2 a.m. She suffered injuries believed to be not life-threatening, police said.

The fatal shooting is the city’s ninth homicide this year, making this the third time in four years that the city has reached that total. The ninth murder last year did not occur until Aug. 21.

For the Smiths, who had another bullet graze the outside of their house, the eruption of gun violence in the city Saturday hit a little too close to home.

“I always defend Brockton. My whole life I grew up here,” Marc Smith, 32, said. “You only see problems when you mess with the wrong crowd or something like that. Today, I have just a completely different feeling about it.”

The couple made an appointment with a real estate agent on Monday to discuss moving out of the city and selling the house they’ve lived in since 2007. They said the city’s violence is not a good environment in which to raise their infant daughter.

“We’re innocent in our house and we think the West Side is a nice side, it’s quiet typically,” Marc said. “With the baby, it’s a different lifestyle. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“This just really ruined it for us,” said Michele Smith, 32.

In the other two shootings, investigators found 11 shell casings outside a 7-Eleven on Belmont Street and on Winthrop Street, a bullet went through a second-story bedroom wall. No one was injured in either shooting, police said.

All four shootings happened within the span of about an hour between 1:54 a.m. and 2:55 a.m.

The Brockton Police Department was very busy during that time, Lt. Kenneth LeGrice said.

Phillips was sitting in a car in a parking lot behind 11 Crescent St. - which is the address for Joe Angelo’s Café - when he was shot in the chest around 2:20 a.m., said Assistant District Attorney Bridget Norton Middleton.

Friends drove Phillips to a Brockton hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Saturday morning, Brockton and state police were investigating the scene where Phillips was shot.

A state police dog was on scene, searching the parking lot, while detectives looked for evidence in a nearby dumpster.

“All of these were separate incidents. None of them appear to be tied together in any way,” LeGrice said.

As of Saturday afternoon, no arrests had been made in any of the shootings.